2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo on 2040-cars

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Supplier says Jeep Cherokee hack only affects FCA cars

Harman doesn't think that drivers need to worry about any further hacks of its products. The company supplies FCA's Uconnect infotainment system where a software vulnerability is responsible for a 1.4-million vehicle recall. "This experimental hack is unique to Chrysler," Harman CEO Dinesh Paliwal said to Automotive News. "This does not exist, to our assessment, in any other vehicle." The reason that the company wouldn't be involved is that automakers aren't simply plugging in the existing infotainment systems into new vehicles. According to Paliwal, Harman supplies the unit, but FCA and other automakers are able to make additional modifications for their vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has also recently taken up the question of broader software vulnerabilities in Harman's products. On July 29, the agency began investigating the company to check for similarities between Uconnect and the infotainment systems supplied to other automakers. The Jeep hack became national news when two researchers were remotely able to take control of a Cherokee. The vulnerability in the cellular connection even gave control over the brakes. "Once people get in the car and get into the CAN bus, then you can start to mimic and mess up many, many things in the car," Paliwal said to Automotive News. Politicians immediately responded with legislation to create federal standards in hopes of protecting drivers better. NHTSA also opened an investigation to make sure the automaker's software update actually solved the problem. Related Video:

Daily Driver: 2015 Jeep Renegade Sport 4x4

Daily Driver videos are micro-reviews of vehicles in the Autoblog test fleet, reviewed by the staffers who drive them every day. Today's Daily Driver features the 2015 Jeep Renegade Sport 4x4, reviewed by Adam Morath. Something to note: The vehicle tested here is a pre-production unit, and we had some issues with the MySky removable roof system. (Associate editor Brandon Turkus mentioned these problems in his Quick Spin.) FCA confirms that improvements were made for production-spec cars. You can watch the video above or read a transcript below. Watch more Autoblog videos at /videos. [00:00:00] Hey, this is Adam Morath with another Daily Driver. Today, we're in the 2015 Jeep Renegade and I'm excited to be driving this in a Sport trim level. That's the lowest trim that they offer it in. I say I'm excited, because often we get the cars to totally spec-ed out to the max, the automaker trying to show off what they can do with the car but it doesn't always give you a realistic view of how most customers are going to spec the car, and I think with the Renegade being the entry-level model for Jeep now [00:00:30] replacing the outgoing Patriot and Compass, it makes sense to drive this in the Sport trim. We do have it in 4x4, comes in at just around $23,000. It's powered by a turbocharged 1.4 liter inline 4 and we've got it, made it to the 6-speed manual transmission, which is pretty cool. Again you can see FCA's fingerprints on this car. If they wanted to do well in Europe, of course you've got to offer it with a manual and that's nice for consumers here to have that choice of having a stick shift in the Jeep again. [00:01:00] That's kind of fun. It produces 160-horsepower, 184 pound-feet of torque. It's got a little pack to it. I wouldn't call it sporty but it's enough for a vehicle of this size. This is a pretty basic version of the renegade. The only options we have on it are the AC, the roof rails, 4-wheel drive, which is a must here in Michigan and then these MySky roof panels, which I'll get to in a minute, but that takes us from a base price of $18,000, the cheapest you'll be able to get into a Renegade for [00:01:30] up to about $23,700, which is where we're at. Yes, these are MySky roof panels. It's a totally new feature on the Renegade that Jeep is trying out and I think it's pretty cool. It's like a tee top system, except the panels aren't side by side. You have one in the front and one in the back.

Jeep in St. Louis hacked from Pittsburgh

One of America's most popular vehicles contains a security flaw that allows hackers to remotely commandeer it from anywhere on the planet. Cyber-security researchers Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller say they've accessed critical vehicle controls on a 2014 Jeep Cherokee that allowed them to remotely control critical vehicle functions like braking, transmission function, and steering. Automakers have downplayed the possibility a car could be remotely compromised, but the significance of the findings detailed Tuesday could cause them to reevaluate the threats posed to hundreds of thousands of vehicles already on the road. A key finding – the pair needed no physical access to the Jeep to pull off the attack. Valasek and Miller accessed the controls via a security hole in the Sprint cellular connection to Chrysler's UConnect infotainment system. In the course of their research, Valasek sat in his Pittsburgh home and remotely manipulated Miller's Jeep as he drove along a highway outside St. Louis. If you know a car's IP address, they say, a hacker could control it from anywhere. "We didn't add anything, didn't touch it," Valasek told Autoblog. "A customer could drive one of these things off a lot, and they'd have no clue it had these open attack surfaces." Remotely, he disabled brakes, turned the radio volume up, engaged windshield wipers and tampered with the transmission. Further, they could conduct surveillance on the Jeep, measuring its speed and tracking its whereabouts. They conducted the experiments over multiple breaches. They made their findings public on the same day the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the federal agency in charge of vehicle safety, released its latest report on the readiness of government and automakers to fend off these sorts of cyber attacks. Later today, two US Senators are expected to introduce legislation that would help consumers better understand the potential risks of car hacking. In the early stages of their research, Valasek and Miller found a security flaw in the car's wi-fi that allowed them to remotely manipulate controls from a range of about three feet. But in recent months, they found another vulnerability in the Sprint cellular connection in the UConnect system. That was a key breakthrough. "Lo and behold, we found we could communicate with this thing using cellular, and then more research, and 'Holy cow,' we're using the Sprint network to communicate with these vehicles," Valasek said.